The Londonderry High School boys’ basketball squad has shown signs of being a pretty strong team at points this winter. But recently, the defending Division I champions have been stumbling considerably.
And things went a bit further south for the locals late last week as they saw their D-I record slide to 4-7 – with just one win in their last seven contests – with losses to the Merrimack High Tomahawks and the Pinkerton Academy Astros, who also downed LHS Monday, Feb. 1, in Derry.
The Lancers absorbed the fifth loss in their previous six contests and slipped to 4-6 in D-I with a 53-46 loss to the Tomahawks at Merrimack High Thursday, Feb. 4.
Londonderry won the first and second quarters by slim margins, tallying a 13-11 lead in the first period and carrying a 29-26 advantage to halftime.
But the host Tomahawks outscored the locals by a 15-7 margin in the third quarter to lead 41-36 going into the fourth stanza, and Merrimack was two points better than LHS (12-10) during that closing period as it advanced its divisional record to a stellar 9-2 with its sixth win in its last seven games.
Nate Gaw led the Lancer effort with 11 points – including a trio of three-pointers – while Matt Corey contributed 10 points along with two treys, Cam MacDonald tallied nine points, and Jake Coleman bagged eight.
The Pinkerton Astros’ 23-point thumping of the Lancers on Feb. 1 in Derry in a rematch of the 2014-15 Division I title game attracted attention in the division. But could the streaking Astros best the stumbling Lancers again on Londonderry’s home floor days later?
The answer to that question wound up being yes for the Astro cagers, who tallied their eighth straight win in advancing to 10-1 in the division. But the 68-62 road victory on Saturday, Feb. 6 certainly wasn’t anywhere near as easy as the earlier one had been.
The two teams battled to a 16-16 tie in the first quarter, but Londonderry then outscored Pinkerton resoundingly in the second quarter on the way to a 38-26 halftime lead.
Lancers’ junior standout Coleman – who had been held to 13 points in the earlier meeting – already had 14 of them by the mid-way point of the second stanza on the way to helping his side to outscore the Astros by a commanding, 22-10 tally.
Astros’ senior standout and top scorer Brennan Morris, who had missed the first meeting with Londonderry due to a case of food poisoning, returned for the rematch but didn’t have a great first half and seemed to be forcing his offense. But Morris would play a big part in Pinkerton’s excellent second half, during which the visitors outscored their hosts by a 42-24 margin in collecting the victory.
After scoring just six points in the first half, Morris netted 15 in the second and helped his Astros to virtually nullify the efforts of Lancer Coleman. Coleman would only tally three more points in half number two.
The game was knotted up at 48-48 at the end of three periods after PA outscored its host by a 22-10 margin in the third, and Pinkerton then netted the first 11 points of the fourth quarter in collecting a 59-48 lead.
Cam McDonald sank a three-pointer with 4:55 left in the game for the Lancers’ first points of the fourth, and he and his teammates were able to fight their way back to within three points (65-62) with a little less than a minute to play. But the hosts would get no closer to victory than that.
Morris’ 21 points led all scorers while Matt Rizzo contributed 15.
Londonderry got 20 points from Matt Corey, 17 from Coleman, and eight from Cole Britting in suffering its sixth loss in seven games.
“They’re a good team, and we did a good job defensively holding them under 30 points in the first half,” said LHS coach Nate Stanton. “We knew we had to bring even more intensity in the second half, but that didn’t happen.”